Movie Name: Life of the Party
Produced: Ben Falcone, Melissa McCarthy, Chris Henchy
Directed: Ben Falcone
Release Date: May 11th, 2018
Budget: $30 million
Box Office: $65.7 million
Introduction
This weekend I was in the mood to watch a comedy and it was the only one really that was new. Since I am a fan of Melissa McCarthy, I decided to take the plunge. Is it good? Is it Bad? Let us find out.
Story
The movie is about a newly divorced woman Deanna "Dee Rock" Miles (played by Melissa McCarthy). Her husband Dan Miles (played by Matt Walsh) has been having an affair with a real estate agent named Marcie Strong (played by Julie Bowen).
This all happens while her daughter Maddie (played by Molly Gordon) is starting her senior year at Decatur University in Atlanta. Deanna has always regretted not finishing her degree when she was younger. So she decides that she will go back and finish her degree.
The rest of the movie is Deanna as an older middle aged woman to try to integrate to the school life and obtain her degree.
Life of the Party Trailer
Bottomline
The movie is a middle of the road comedy where the actual premise has been done before. The movie that comes to mind for me is Back to School (1986) with Rodney Dangerfield.
Melissa McCarthy who helped produce this movie, is her usual self. If you have seen her other movies you will feel at home here. She plays the out of touch parent very well.
The other bright spot for the movie is Maya Rudolph who plays Deanna's best friend Christine Davenport. She also brings her usual humour and I thought she stole all the scenes that she was in. She brings a breath of fresh air to a movie that feels stale.
The rest of the cast even though there are some really good actors and actresses such as Julie Bowen (Modern Family), Gillian MacLaren Jacobs (Love) and Chris Parnell (Saturday Night Live and Archer), the movie has a hard time winning over the audience.
There are parts of the movie where you are supposed to have the feels and I find those moments fell flat because other than a few characters, I did not really care for anyone else. For example, they make it clear that the audience should hate the ex-husband and his new found love, but in the end I did not care for them. Their performances fell flat in my opinion.
The way I see it is, they had all the ingredients to make a good to great movie but putting the movie together proved to not work as well as expected.
I feel that Back to School was better than this movie. Both movies are stupid comedies with little thinking involved but I liked Back to School slightly better. Similar to this one, it banked on the lead actor's humour to drive the movie.
It says a lot about the status of comedies at the movie theatre. This movie actually made a profit. I believe this is due to having limited choices in this genre.
If this is a free movie on Netflix, I would recommend you to watch it, however there have been many other movies that have done a better job with the same premise.
Rating: 3 University Courses out of 5
What did you think? Did I miss the mark? Let us know below.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Arroundtable
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aroundtable.ca/
Email: allroundtable@gmail.com
Website: http://www.aroundtable.ca/